these days, His ways

• My computer is kaput.
• Almost all of my music is lost (and my CDs were stolen in Chuuk.)
• Becca is on the other side of the world.
• Donna is on the other side of the country.
• Others are...
• I let Cherie give away our kitty Elliot.
• I don't have a job, a routine, a - as most people refer to it - "life."
• I don't have money to spend aimlessly although that does nothing for matters of the heart anyway.
• I'm busy.
• I'm bored.
• I'm more tired than I was all summer and all two years in grad. school.
• ...I'm also a huge complainer - and you, and I, and God despise complainers.

Where is He? Where is God?

Oh, He is here. He is definitely here. I have no doubt of that.

He is teaching me...
...service to those that are many times hardest for me to serve.
...patience as I wait, endurance.
...His particular care of my heart condition and attitude in all things.
...routine (? yes.) of daily serving others and not myself as I have been doing all the days of my life.
...He takes away for my good.

And He is continuing to teach me...
...that He is best,
...that His promises never fail,
...that He has purposes in all things for His glory, honor, and praise.

"Anisiei!" "Hari kari a min bike!" "Ayudame!"

"Help me!" I cry. I don't know how else to pray at this point.

But...

He has proven Himself to me. He will hear this cry, this plea for mercy, and He will answer... in His timing, in His way, for His most wonderful glory.

---

I finished Amy's biography. Chapter 27 - "The Lesson of the Weaned Child" - His lesson for me now?

One of Amy's precious colaborers died.

"We are not asked to SEE," said Amy. "Why need we when we KNOW?" We
know - not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the the incontestable
fact that it is for the best. It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith
at all if it is 'hard to trust' when things are entirely bewildering?"
...Others, with a sigh and a shake of the head, observed that it is difficult
for us human beings to escape bitterness, even dumb rage, when such things
happen. ..."It is indeed not only difficult, it is impossible," Amy
wrote. "There is only one way of victory over the bitterness and rage that
come naturally to us - To will what God wills brings peace." ...And as we
rest our hearts upon what we know (the certainty of the ultimate triumph of
good) leaving what we do not know to the Love that has led us all our life long,
the peace of God enters into us and abides.

And speaking of prayer, "We knew our Father. There was no need for persuasion. Would not His fatherliness be longing to give us our hearts' desire (if I may put it so)? How could we press Him as though He were not our own most loving Father?"

Elisabeth continues,

How was she to go on? She was an orphan. Her own parents gone,
her spiritual father and mother gone. She had not known life without such
support. Nor has the child, when weaning time comes, known life without
its unfailing source of nourishment. Like the weaned child, Amy knew that
the lesson assigned now was to learn to do without. She wrote another
prayer:

And shall I pray Thee change Thy will, my father,
Until it be according
unto mine?
But, no, Lord, no, that never shall be, rather
I pray Thee
blend my human will with Thine.

I pray Thee hush the hurrying, eager longing,
I pray Thee soothe the pangs
of keen desire -
See in my quiet places, wishes thronging -
Forbid them,
Lord, purge, though it be with fire.

And work in me to will and Thy pleasure
Let all within me, peaceful,
reconciled,
Tarry content my Well-Beloved's leisure,
At last, at last, even
as a weaned child.

And so we arrive back to the title - A Chance to Die. I have actually thought much about this "dying" over the past years of my life. This seemingly crazy circle that few understand and even fewer attempt to realize in their own walking. We are living beings but only truly living with Christ. As those covered by His blood, we die to self to truly live. What does that mean? I do not think it is a daily meditation on our sin, then we would only indulge in self-pity and we are told to fix our eyes on the Author of our faith. But I do believe it is a moment-by-moment awareness of my heart in all its activities. Am I doing, serving, loving because Jesus did, served, and loved me? Are my movements each day brought on by gratitude and wonder and love to please my God? This is where my cry for help comes, from the depths of my failure at the sins of my heart which obviously are eventually if not totally portrayed in my actions. The same blood that justifies is the same blood that sanctifies. And I must choose to yield to His Spirit. I am beginning to believe that this is the sacrifice Christ asks of us - all the other sacrifices (sometimes more seemingly visible) He may ask of His own are only the further working out of what they already have sacrificed - their will, their soul, their all.

It is hard because of my sin but the burden is light because of the sacrifice already made - Christ Jesus, Himself. And remember, not just His death but the whole of His life on earth - leaving His throne, living on earth (as I ache to be rid of it!), then allowing excruciating pain, wanting to not go through it, but obeying His Father. And what happened? Resurrection, redemption, and reconciliation - the most glorious, wonderful thing EVER! Praise Him! Praise Jesus! Praise Yahweh! Praise Him alone!

"It was an act of faith, but certainly accompanied by the anguish of doubt and desire which had to be brought again and again under the authority of the Master."

"Here and nowhere else she would prove Him, here, in the vicissitudes and exigencies of the work assigned. Her Lord too had 'learned obedience.'"

"Home, with all its prohibitions and opportunities to die daily offered training far greater than any Bible school curriculum. It was a long obedience..."

"I am learning the lesson set to the weaned child. I am learning to do without."

Without... but Him.